‘Chinese’ rocket size of school bus reportedly crashes into the Moon

A “Chinese” rocket that has been orbiting for almost decade, has likely crashed into the Moon, according to astronomers.

An out-of-control rocket part the size of a school bus has likely smashed into the Moon’s surface by now.

According to astronomers, the three-tonne rocket booster was set to hit the lunar surface about 11pm Sunday night after spending nearly eight years tumbling through space.

It was likely the first time a man-made object has crashed into another space body without being aimed there.

But we won’t know that it hit the Moon for sure until two satellites that orbit the Moon pass over the possible impact site and photograph any crater that resulted from the collision, the BBC reported.

The rocket part was first spotted by Bill Gray, who writes the popular Project Pluto software to track near-Earth objects.

He first reported that the junk was a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage launched from Florida by Elon Musk’s team in February 2015.

However, Mr Gray later retracted his claim and said the rocket part most likely belonged to China. China has since denied the accusation.

The rocket part is a type of “space junk” — hardware from missions or satellites that do not have enough fuel to return to Earth.

It’s estimated there are 36,500 pieces of space junk larger than 10cm in orbit.

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The rocket has likely smashed into the Moon, according to astronomers. Picture: Luis Acosta / AFP.

What company does the rocket body belong to?

The top stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) in 2015 was first considered to be the rocket body.

The object, however, is now linked to China’s Long March 3C rocket, which launched China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission in 2014, according to Space.com.

Chang’e 5-T1 circled beyond the moon and returned to Earth to test the Chang’e 5 lunar sample return mission’s atmospheric re-entry capabilities in 2020.

On behalf of the Luxembourg-based business LuxSpace, Chang’e 5-T1 carried a secondary payload of scientific equipment in the upper stage of the Long March rocket.

US mathematician and physicist Bill Gray reported the rocket was SpaceX Falcon 9 launched in 2015. He later retracted his claim. Picture: SpaceX.

‘Chinese rocket’

Bill Gray, the manager of Project Pluto, which provides both commercial and free astronomy software to amateur and professional astronomers, is one of the persons who has made the China link, as reported by Space.com.

“There really is no good reason at this point to think the object is anything other than the Chang’e 5-T1 booster,” Mr Gray told Inside Outer Space last month.

“Anybody claiming otherwise has a pretty large hill of evidence to overcome.”

Chinese ministry officials have denied the accusation and said the upper stage of the rocket returned to Earth’s atmosphere and burned up. Picture: AFP photo / China Out.

China’s denial

“According to China’s monitoring, the upper stage of the Chang’e-5 mission rocket has fallen through the Earth’s atmosphere in a safe manner and burnt up completely,” Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said of the mystery object.

However, experts noticed that China referred to the Chang’e-5 mission, not the similarly named Chang’e 5-T1 mission at the heart of it.

- with The Sun